Director Amber Bjork’s theater company The Winding Sheet Outfit is at it again, taking a seemingly obscure artist and elevating their story in theatrical form, showing us why we should care about the fact that they and their art existed.
Art about artists frequently leaves me cold, but never the the way The Winding Sheet Outfit tackles the subject (there’s a reason they first appeared on my pre-Fringe Top 10 list back in 2012; whatever strange or wonderful topic they fixate on, they get their audiences to care about it, too):
The Spirit Moves You To Color the Unseen
The Winding Sheet Outfit
Venue: Rarig Thrust
Show Description:
Channeled from Spirit, Hilma af Klint's paintings are ineffable, groundbreaking, and absolutely breathtaking. It's our honor to introduce you to the artist and her work through movement, music, color and light.
The award-winning devised theater group returns with a story of Swedish painter and mystic, Hilma af Klint. Years before Kandinski and Mondrian, af Klint was commissioned by spirits to paint roadmaps to the universe, grand works that were meant be housed in a great temple. But the message was sent too early and Hilma's art was fated to have a far-future audience that she knew she would never live to see. With live abstract music, movement, and color, The Winding Sheet brings Hilma af Klint's two worlds--that of early 1900 Sweden and the realm of spirits--to the Fringe, placing them in the temple that is Rarig Thrust, for the audiences of now.
Genre & Content:
Drama, Original Music, Historical Content, Physical Theater, LGBTQIA+ Content
Warnings: None
Not a story of horror, which they also sometimes revel in, but definitely a story with a supernatural bent to it.
Bjork has assembled another eye-popping cast of devised theater heavy-hitters, led by Boo Segersin as the artist Hilma af Klint and Kristina Fjellman as the Spirit that guides her, along with Megan Campbell Lagas, Kayla Dvorak Feld, Peyton McCandless, Heather Meyer, and composer/musician Derek Lee Miller
I have no idea what I'm in for, of course. With these folks, I never really do. But I'm game for the ride. I always end up somewhere I'm glad I went. Let's see what theatrical magic tricks they've got up their sleeve this time, shall we?
Their Fringe show page name checks a documentary about the artist, Beyond The Visible - here’s a trailer for a taste:
Here’s some handy links to my Fringe Top 10, Top 11 to 20 and Returning Favorites lists for this year, as well as all the coverage of this year’s Minnesota Fringe Festival.
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